


it’s not the waking

by tospreadthewingsofthesoul



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Boundaries, Co-dependence, F/F, F/M, Finn and Poe are wonderful also in love, Fix-it fic, I have a newfound interest in complex polyamory, IM SPRRY IM TRYING TO FIX IT, Its been brought to my attention that this didn’t filter well for spoilers, Look I don’t support Reylo, M/M, Moral injury, Multi, Not Everybody Lives, Other, PTSD, Poe drinks his respect women juice, Polyamory, Spoilers, TRoS Spoilers, The Rise of Skywalker - Freeform, but - Freeform, but some important people live, fight me, find you a ma who respects you like they do, if you’re gonna do a redemption arc I expect there to be CONSEQUENCES, in this fic - Freeform, it’s an intense relationship that deserves to be handled with care, remember kids genocide isn’t cool, resoecting boundaries IS romantic!, rey is actually a nobody, seriously spoilers, so I’m tagging it, so if TROS won’t I will, so there’s a lot of, stalking and kidnapping aren’t romantic, toxoc relationships, tros, well A person lives, you can have good chemistry with people that you SHOULDN’T DATE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21870181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tospreadthewingsofthesoul/pseuds/tospreadthewingsofthesoul
Summary: TROS SPOILERSThere was nothing left for Rey to leave on Exegol, but there were things waiting for her to return. Rey is not nobody. Not anymore.In which redemption is not as simple as dying, love and trust are not the same thing, and the regular rules of the universe do not apply.A fix-it doc for TROS, in which I keep the story’s excellent bones and just... tweak some things.
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars), Finn/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Poe Dameron/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 18
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have made Some Decisions.
> 
> Those decisions include spoilers.
> 
> I don’t like that Rey is a Palpatine so I’m ignoring it. You can tell the exact same story about a powerful girl from nowhere who attracts the attention of the Emperor without them having to be related. Seriously, cut that shit out.
> 
> This is mainly going to be Finn/Rey/Poe, I won’t lie to you. But I’m also not just going to ignore Ben. I want to be very clear that I truly do not believe that Rey and Ben would make anything resembling a healthy couple. But they do have an important relationship and I want some space in the sandbox to explore what happens when they realize that what they’ve got going on is very not good for them. Also if you’re going to give Ben a redemption arc you need to COMMIT, dammit. He needs to face the consequences of his actions, and by god he will. And also he needs to learn to be a person again which is not easy.
> 
> And look, polyamory is a real and complicated thing. Finn can love Poe AND Rey AND Rose. Poe can love Finn AND Rey and Zorri. There’s plenty of love to go around, so let’s use it to do some good, yeah?

Chapter 1

It might have been hard to leave him there, but there was nothing to leave. All this time, all the fear and triumph and loneliness and togetherness, and there was just nothing left. 

So Rey left. 

And once she was out from the shadow of that place, once the shapes of long-dead Sith Lords were buried under her feet instead of looming above her head, she remembered that there was not nothing left after all. There was air, and light, and a fine, cool mist. The x-wig was where she had left it. Above, the jagged remnants of the Final Order plummeted to the earth. She could feel the tremors of their destruction and hear the screaming of the victorious engines overhead, and none of it was nothing. 

It was everything. 

She held on to each concrete sensation- the helmet strap digging into her chin, the trickle of blood running down her face, the buzz of static caused by comms too jammed with shouts of triumph- the entire way back. It was not a long trip. Or perhaps it was. Rey couldn’t be sure. 

And then there were more things, and so many of them wonderful. There was the green she had never adjusted too, and loamy ground beneath her feet. There was so much laughter, and movement, and celebration. 

BB-8. Finn. Poe. 

They were here, and real, and Rey was suddenly clinging to them desperately. They clutched her back, and didn’t turn to nothing beneath her hands. Rey was never going to let go of them again, not as long as the universe stood. 

***

Learning to let go of them again takes days. She can’t bear to be separated at first, clinging to their hands and elbows and shoulders. There is so much to be done, by all of them- it would make more sense to divide and conveyer. But any time someone tries to beckon Poe over time solve some problem, Finn drops whatever he’s doing to follow, and Rey always touching them both. They sit together, after awhile. When some of the celebration had abated and the mourning has set in. People sat by fires in clusters, some asleep already. They were all of them exhausted, though there were few injuries. Anyone who was injured enough to matter hadn’t made it back. 

They’d lost so many. Rey could feel Poe counting, could see the way his eyes followed the crowd, trying to account for as many as he could. Finn nudged him with an elbow. 

“Stop it,” he told Poe, though not ungently. “We did it. They would’ve been proud, every one of them.”

Poe pulled the top of Finn’s head closer from where it rested on his shoulder, so he could kiss the top of it. Rey squeezes his hand. 

“Mind-readers, both of you,” Poe complained, but he didn’t seem upset about it. If anything, Rey thought he sounded relieved. 

“I don’t actually think I can do that.”

They both cranes their necks to look at her quizzically.

“Read minds, I mean.” 

She was pretty sure she couldn’t.

“I can kind of... sense things, sometimes? With you two especially. How you’re feeling, what you’re about to do. But I can’t read your mind. I don’t think.”

And it isn’t funny, it’s not funny at all. But suddenly they’re all laughing again, feeling each other’s ribs shake, crying with the force of it, and they can’t seem to stop. Rey doesn’t tell them her story, not tonight. But she will, and then maybe after they will laugh again. 

And that’s not nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look I’m just trying to get as much of this out as fast as possible before I lose steam, so please forgive me any mistakes.

Chapter 2

She couldn’t have said how she knew exactly where to go, but things like that didn’t bother her anymore. The Force was with her, and leading her steps to an abandoned moisture farm on Tattooine seemed a simple thing now. It both reminded her of Jakku and did not. The sand under her feet was too fine, almost powdery, and the smells were strange, ozone and dust and something sharp she couldn’t identify. Somewhere in the distance, a great predator shrieked, and Rey felt it reverberate down to her bones. 

The twin suns baked into her skin, and it was so familiar it ached. The dry air plucked at her hair and clothes, and it was like being welcomed home.

Rey knew somehow that this was where it had started, perhaps many times. This was not a place of birth, or of death, just of change, of powerful catalysts and impossible decisions. She felt flashes of sensation: a young boy, overwhelmed with grief - no, two young boys, different, the same, both angry - a beautiful woman reaching out with forgiveness in her hands - lives toiled away in peace and sweat - a nauseating rush of horror that someone had felt at what they had done - curiosity at a strange droid with carbon scoring - and then it was all gone. Yes, the Force seemed to be telling her. This is where it began, and began and began again. 

So this is where she buried them. Rey knew that there were cultures who buried the bodies of their dead- to what purpose, she did not know. She did not do it out of mourning, not out of hope that she might send anyone to a peaceful after life. 

She just knew of nowhere that something could be lost to time as easily as under the sand. 

They understood, both of them. She could see it in their faces, when they appeared on the horizon. A thousand generations lived in her. She was their legacy. 

But she was also herself. She was also just Rey. 

Holding on to relics would do her no good anymore. 

So when a withered local woman asked her name, she told her that she was Rey. Just Rey. That satisfied both of them. The woman didn’t seem concerned about whether or not Rey belonged there. If anyone owned the farm, she didn’t care. Instead, she asked Rey whether she knew how to turn on the generator, how to harvest the water from the vaporators. Rey had never done it before, but it was easy enough with the woman’s help. There were plenty of repairs to be made, but Rey could handle that. By the time the suns had truly began setting, the woman had nodded in satisfaction, and left with a promise to return. 

Rey stayed at the farm, repairing equipment and scavenging old wrecks for parts, for months. There was so much work to be done, and each night she fell asleep planning what she would need to do tomorrow. She meditated sometimes, but in truth rarely needed to. Her long treks across the sand gave her plenty of time for stillness, for quiet in her mind and heart. 

She knew that Finn and Poe missed her; she could feel it, even this far away. She missed them too, as intensely as she had ever missed her parents. But she had told them some of her story, explained a small part of her grief. They couldn’t understand, exactly, but they trusted her, knew that she would work and mourn and come back to them in turn. She could feel Finn especially reaching out to her, offering comfort in odd moments. She imagined him on his rare quiet nights on base, sitting cross-legged on the bed they had so recently all begun sharing, focusing all his attention on his love for her. 

The mismatch of their orbits meant that these moments came at odd times- while Rey was in the middle of breakfast, or bartering for parts in the cantina. 

They never failed to make her smile. 

It helped a little, to warm her in the places that had fallen cold. There had been another presence at her side for so long, always someone else at the back of her mind, and now it was gone. She could not mourn Kylo Ren; she would not. But Ben has been a part of her for so long that sometimes it was bewildering, to turn and expect to feel him there and find nothing. It was like reaching for a foothold that collapsed underneath her. 

She learned to find her footing. Knowing that Finn and Poe were there, ready for her to return; knowing that they saw the importance of the work she was doing; knowing that eventually she would have more work to do; all of these things helped. 

One day, she looked up, and everything was finished. The vaporators were running, she had an arrangement with the woman to upkeep them in her absence. The living quarters had been expanded and scrubbed. There was a workshop for repairs and a kitchen for gathering, and all that was missing was people to fill it. 

So Rey clipped her saber on to her belt, and let BB-8 know that they were leaving.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s strange, to pull the ship in for a landing at what was once a discreet resistance base. There’s a true hangar now, and permanent buildings, and more people than Rey had ever seen gathered in one resistance base. 

Word of her return travels so fast that Finn practically lifts her from the cockpit. He is laughing, and BB-8 is zooming around underfoot. She’s never gotten used to this, his arms wrapped around her middle, tight around her ribs and safe as anything she’s known. 

It turns out that Poe is off-world, so Rey is passed around her friends for the rest of the day, catching up and reassuring each other that they were well and whole. Finn was in high demand, so Rey enjoyed sitting next to Rose with their feet dangling from the one wing of the ship she was repairing while they ate. Rey felt more real here than she had in months. The steel was sun-warmed under her, and she was smeared in oil and dirt with no one to look askance at her for it. Rose was elbows-deep in all the comings and goings of everyone in the base, and was more than happy to share her knowledge. They laughed together in the humid air; Rey watched Rose sketch her words into the air with her hands, and grinned until her face hurt. 

She learned that Jess had been working with Zorii on a few deep-space missions and they’d come back pretty cozy, to Poe’s amusement and chagrin. Finn had nearly snapped under the stress of managing their people, but Rose and Poe had intervened just in time. The resistance was struggling under the weight of its new responsibilities, and Poe had been tag-teaming alliances with General Calrissian’s help. Against the two of them, no one stood a chance, and they were making friends even faster than they were making enemies. 

“I’m glad you’re back,” Rose told Rey, her hands tucked up under thighs, staring out over the hangar. “Things are so good. But everything’s going so fast. I don’t think anyone can really see where we’re going. They could really use you.” She turned her dimpled smile on Rey, and then there was a small explosion and a shower of sparks from somewhere deeper in the hangar. 

“Yeah, that’s my cue. Welcome back!” 

And Rose hopped down to run towards whatever minor disaster had erupted. 

Rey wipes her hands off on her pants, shoves the last night of rations in her mouth, and heads off to find Lieutenant Connix. 

Lieutenant Connix was relieved to see her, and more relieved to hand off a few of the more sensitive missions to her. None of them were particularly urgent, but she was evidently having some trouble figuring out who they could trust with their entrenched leaders already stretched so thin. Rey promised to follow through on a few leads as soon as she could. 

She’d need to talk with Finn and Poe about her plans, but they were likely to be more long-term than urgent. 

Rey eventually found her way back to the quarters set aside for Finn. He was there when she returned, scrubbing his face in preparation to sleep. Rey folded herself up on the bed. 

“Long day?”

Finn shrugged. 

“It always is, to be honest. There’s just so much to be done.”

Rey thought it always took Finn an unreasonably long time to tidy up before bed, scrubbing his skin and his teeth, straightening out any of the clutter that Poe had left behind. 

“Are you back?” Finn asked over his shoulder, as if by not facing her he would hide how nervous asking made him. 

Rey shrugged. 

“For a while. Connix asked me to look into those rumors coming out of Vestigess-7. Rose says you’re looking at moving the base?”

Finn finally padded over to stretch out next to her. 

“Yeah. We’re just not very well located right now, but no one can agree on where we should move. Or who should be in charge of what. I’m starting to realize that this is not ever going to be done, not really.”

Rey nodded. She knew the feeling. Even thousands of light years away, Tatooine was still there, still waiting for her to return. It would be there in a year, in five, in ten. 

She didn’t know what to say, though, or if she should say anything at all. So instead she just wormed her way under the covers. They never got used to this, either of them, the unspeakable comfort of having someone else curled up against them in the dark. Finn has told her once that he had been bunked alone at first, while he was recovering from his coma. It had been too quiet, after years of sleeping in tight rows of stacked bunks with other troopers, and he’d barely been able to sleep. 

Rey had never slept so close to another person before she’d found Finn, and she always forgot how warm it was. The nights on Jakku had been freezing, forcing her to curl up under nested layers of blankets and insulation. So even though the base was warm, and humid to the point of being uncomfortable, Rey still took comfort in the warmth of Finn at her back. It was even better when Poe was there too, on Finn’s other side. 

Finn always slept on his back. Rey curled up facing the door, with her spine pressed against him. They lay there in the dark for a long time, quiet. Rey closed her eyes and let herself relax into the Force. 

Finn was a beacon beside her, so bright that it nearly blinded her to everything else. She took a deep breath, adjusted, and cast herself out further. 

The entire base was filled with life, bustling and sleeping, filled with tensions and hopes and worries. She could pick out people she knew easily, but every other life was as tangled up as the trees and the insects, woven together so tightly that she made no effort to trace them. 

Soon distance faded away into meaninglessness. The Force was everywhere, in all things, and so was she. Exegol echoed, dark and hollow at the edges of her awareness. She could sense Poe, still awake somewhere in the universe. Even the plant that she had grown in the hull of her scrap shelter on Jakku was a bright point of light. 

The presence at her back was so familiar, so normal, that she drifted for a long time before she even noticed it. 

And just as soon as she realized who it was, he was gone. 

Rey shut up in the bed, shaking, tears running down her face. Finn braced a hand against her back, and she clung to his shoulder. 

“What is it? What happened?”

She shook her head, trying to dispel the urgency in his voice. 

“It’s... it was Ben.” She clenched her hand tighter around him. “Finn, he was here.”

Finn went still, quiet in that way that meant he was afraid, and determined to not let it rule him. 

“It’s alright, Rey. We’ll figure this out. You’re safe.” 

Moving very slowly, he rubbed the tears from her face with one gentle thumb. Rey shook her head again. 

“No, I know. It’s not... I know I’m safe. It’s just...” Rey turned to Finn, to search his face, suddenly desperate for him to understand. “It’s just he’s gone again.”

And when she buried her face in his shirt to swallow a sob, he understood. She could feel him understand, his confusion melt away into bewilderment and worry, and even perhaps anger. But he wrapped his arms around her, and cupped the back of her head with one hand, and let her cry until she was finished. 

She fell asleep still clinging to his hand.


End file.
